"Jules Verne. Off on a Comet. WORKS" - читать интересную книгу автора

silently descended the mountain and remounted their horses.
Before evening they had reached the Mediterranean. On their road
they failed to discern a vestige of the little town of Montenotte;
like Tenes, of which not so much as a ruined cottage was visible
on the horizon, it seemed to be annihilated.

On the following day, the 6th of January, the two men made
a forced march along the coast of the Mediterranean, which they
found less altered than the captain had at first supposed;
but four villages had entirely disappeared, and the headlands,
unable to resist the shock of the convulsion, had been detached
from the mainland.

The circuit of the island had been now completed, and the explorers,
after a period of sixty hours, found themselves once more beside
the ruins of their gourbi. Five days, or what, according to the
established order of things, would have been two days and a half,
had been occupied in tracing the boundaries of their new domain;
and they had ascertained beyond a doubt that they were the sole
human inhabitants left upon the island.

"Well, sir, here you are, Governor General of Algeria!" exclaimed Ben Zoof,
as they reached the gourbi.

"With not a soul to govern," gloomily rejoined the captain.

"How so? Do you not reckon me?"

"Pshaw! Ben Zoof, what are you?"

"What am I? Why, I am the population."

The captain deigned no reply, but, muttering some expressions
of regret for the fruitless trouble he had taken about his rondo,
betook himself to rest.



CHAPTER VII

BEN ZOOF WATCHES IN VAIN


In a few minutes the governor general and his population were asleep.
The gourbi being in ruins, they were obliged to put up with
the best accommodation they could find in the adjacent erection.
It must be owned that the captain's slumbers were by no means sound;
he was agitated by the consciousness that he had hitherto been unable
to account for his strange experiences by any reasonable theory.
Though far from being advanced in the knowledge of natural